Graffiti News

Kenny Dunn is the first face of “Unsung Heroes”

Kenny Dunn, a street cleaner familiar to people walking New Brighton’s promenade, is the subject of a mural by artist Dotmasters. According to Liverpool Echo, the work belongs to the OpenAIR Gallery in the town’s Victoria Quarter and opens a series called “Unsung Heroes”. Its subject is someone whose daily work helps keep a shared place usable and welcoming.

The report, collected on 2 September 2026, identifies Dunn as a 70-year-old Biffa employee from Wallasey who has worked in New Brighton for 13 years. Daniel Davies of Rockpoint Leisure nominated him for the portrait. The tribute gives a public face to work that people encounter through its results: emptied bins and a cleaner promenade.

The work clothes carry the portrait’s story

The mural depicts Dunn in his orange Biffa uniform, holding a bin bag, with a deep-blue damask pattern against a black wall. These details, described by the Echo, keep his occupation central to the image. The bag and uniform connect the portrait to the person promenade users recognise while going about their own routines.

Dunn’s route includes around 50 bins, most of which are full each morning, according to the report. He said people sometimes react with surprise when they see the rubbish gathered together. That scale of daily work provides a useful way to read the image: the bag represents a repeated task behind the appearance of the seafront.

Dunn told the Echo that he takes pride in keeping the area clean, particularly along the promenade. For a viewer interested in public art, the portrait offers a connection between the visible artwork and the less visible effort required to care for the surrounding streets. Its account of local life begins with a working day.

Appreciation already existed before the mural

Dunn described an established relationship with residents, walkers and businesses, with people thanking him for his work almost every day. He regularly talks with walkers and dog walkers, knows about their holidays and weekend plans, and receives offers of tea or coffee from businesses along the promenade. On hot days, he said, people offer him water.

Those exchanges matter to the mural’s meaning. The portrait can be read as a public expression of recognition that was already taking place in conversation. It gives a lasting visual form to the ordinary greetings and thanks described in the report, while keeping the worker himself at the centre of the story.

Dunn said the invitation to watch the mural being painted was humbling, and he enjoyed both seeing the process and the finished result. He also described receiving many messages of thanks and congratulations afterwards. The Echo’s account presents the response through Dunn’s experience; it does not provide a count of visitors or a formal measure of the mural’s reception.

Victoria Quarter supplies the wider setting

The portrait sits within a street-art setting that Dunn has watched develop during his years in the town. The Echo describes Rockpoint Leisure as a regeneration-led company whose work in Victoria Quarter originated New Brighton’s street-art scene in 2017. That history connects the nomination to the area in which the portrait appears.

Dunn remembered New Brighton as much quieter when he began working there. He singled out Victoria Road for its murals, paintings and opening businesses, and spoke about meeting people visiting from outside the area by bus and coach. These are his observations of change, rather than visitor statistics or an assessment of every business in the neighbourhood.

For anyone planning to see the artwork, the location supported by the report is the OpenAIR Gallery in Victoria Quarter, New Brighton. The source does not give a precise street number or an unveiling date. Reading the portrait alongside the nearby street-art setting and the promenade’s daily use helps explain why a cleaner became its subject. The orange uniform links an individual face to the everyday care of a seaside town.

Explore other works using the Wallscape map.

Source: Liverpool Echo